ity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle. Since, however, the
counter-implicate is an important guide in the interpretation of
propositions, it is desirable to recognise it among the modes of
Immediate Inference.

I propose, then, first, to show that people do ordinarily infer at
once to a counter-sense; second, to explain briefly the Law of Thought
on which such an inference is justified; and, third, how this law
may be applied in the interpretation of propositions, with a view to
making subject and predicate more definite.

Every affirmation about anything is an implicit negation about
something else. Every say is a gainsay. That people ordinarily
act upon this as a rule of interpretation a little observation is
sufficient to show: and we find also that those who object to having
their utterances interpreted by this rule often shelter themselves
under the name of Logic.

Suppose, for example, that a friend remarks, when the conversation
turns on children, that John is a good boy, the natural inference is
that the speaker has in his mind another child who is not a good boy.
Such an inference would at once be drawn by any actual hearer, and the
speaker would protest in vain that he said nothing about anybody but
John. Suppose there are two candidates for a school appointment, A
and B, and that stress is laid upon the fact that A is an excellent
teacher. A's advocate would at once be understood to mean that B was
not equally excellent as a teacher.

The fairness of such inferences is generally recognised. A reviewer,
for example, of one of Mrs. Oliphant's historical works, after
pointing out some small errors, went on to say that to confine himself
to censure of small points, was to acknowledge by implication that
there were no important points to find fault with.

Yet such negative implications are often repudiated as illogical.
It would be more accurate to call them extra-logical. They are not
condemned by any logical doctrine: they are simply ignored. They are
extra-logical only because they are not legitimated by the Laws of
Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle: and the reason why
Logic confines itself to those laws is that they are sufficient for
Syllogism and its subsidiary processes.

But, though extra-logical, to infer a counter-implicate is not
unreasonable: indeed, if Definition, clear vision of things in their
exact relations, is our goal rather than Syllogism, a knowledge of
the counter-implica